On Monday nights when shaggy-haired young men with restless video-game thumbs hustle off the bus at the recruit depot in San Diego, one of the first Marines they see is a woman.

Sgt. Maj. Jennifer Simmons, standing straight-backed under her “Smokey Bear” hat — the iconic campaign cover of a Marine drill instructor — is a regular at recruit pickup, when the 12-week transformation from civilian to Marine begins.

As senior enlisted leader of Support Battalion, she oversees most training at the depot, from the drill instructor school to recruit martial arts.

Whoever thinks women don’t belong in the Corps hasn’t dared tell Simmons, a three-time combat veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“No one treats me special. They treat me like a sergeant major in the Marine Corps, and I demand that respect, whether I’m on the depot or at Camp Pendleton, anywhere,” Simmons said.

The Marine Corps wants a few good women like Simmons in charge. Lots more, actually.

Putting women leaders out front in the armed forces’ most male-dominated service is good for recruits and good for the Corps, Marine brass said. They hope to increase decorum, expand promotion opportunities for female Marines, combat sexual assault and allow commanders to pick the best candidate for a job regardless of gender.

“It’s not only respecting the rank, it’s about respecting you as a leader so they will follow you regardless of the situation. So we want to expose them to as many different leadership models and role models that they are going to have in the operating forces,” said Brig. Gen. Daniel Yoo, commanding general of Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego and Western Recruiting Region.

The push for gender diversity in the Marine Corps is much bigger than boot camp. Lawmakers and Pentagon leaders have ordered the armed forces to ditch restrictions wherever possible that hold women back in their careers, and work harder against sexual harassment.

In January, the defense secretary overturned the Pentagon’s 1994 policy barring women from formal assignment to direct ground combat units. By 2016, each of the services must justify which, if any, military jobs they want to remain closed to women, including infantry, reconnaissance and special operations.

From the end last year of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell restrictions preventing gays from serving openly — a change the Corps was most resistant to beforehand — to opening more combat units to women, the Corps is redefining itself.

“The culture has changed already,” Yoo said. “I grew up in a peacetime Marine Corps. But over the last 12 years of combat, we have learned a lot of lessons.”

Almost half of women who served in Afghanistan or Iraq reported they had been sexually harassed and nearly a quarter sexually assaulted, according to an anonymous survey of more than 1,100 last year by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Putting more women in charge should help because research shows sexual assault is about power and an attack of authority, Yoo said. “It’s very frustrating for the leadership when you have a fellow Marine in today’s battlefield, that deploys with you, and you treat them less than you should with that respect,” he said.